A friend who works down the hall asked me the following question: "How come, whenever my wife drinks a few glasses of white wine (she doesn't like reds), she always (well, 9 times out of 10) gets a headache the next day, except if she drinks Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay? Then she doesn't get a headache". I didn't have a good answer, so I told him I knew where I could find the answer - here. So, help me, and my friend's wife out.

Howie Hart wrote:A friend who works down the hall asked me the following question: "How come, whenever my wife drinks a few glasses of white wine (she doesn't like reds), she always (well, 9 times out of 10) gets a headache the next day, except if she drinks Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay? Then she doesn't get a headache". I didn't have a good answer, so I told him I knew where I could find the answer - here. So, help me, and my friend's wife out.

Howie,

Your friend has to define "a few glasses." Maybe she has a certain limit that she often steps over.

Incidentally, I have no faith in such anecdotes, especially when just one particular wine supposedly does not produce the results that all the others do, especially when that one particular wine has no particular attributes to explain the phenomenon; by that point, I'm on the side of it either being psychological or, the remote possibility that each time she drinks KJ, she does not or does eat a certain food, smoke a certain number of packs of cigarettes or shut the windows too tight to keep out oxygen.

Howie Hart wrote:A friend who works down the hall asked me the following question: "How come, whenever my wife drinks a few glasses of white wine (she doesn't like reds), she always (well, 9 times out of 10) gets a headache the next day, except if she drinks Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay? Then she doesn't get a headache". I didn't have a good answer, so I told him I knew where I could find the answer - here. So, help me, and my friend's wife out.

I'm no expert but if the question were in the inverse in that she only got a headache when she drank one particular wine I would assume that there is something inherent to the winery that made the wine that was in the finished product to which she was allergic. Seeing as this is the other way around it seems reasonable (albeit unlikely) that the one wine (actually not the only one if she only gets a headache 9 out of 10 times) that does not give her a headache is made in a more sterile environment and likely receives significant filtration thus reducing or eliminating whatever it is that causes the headache to an insignificantly low level.

There's nothing intrinsic about KJ that makes it different in any significant degree from pretty much most of the wines out there. It's not appreciably different in sulfites, for instance, since there are many wines about the same level, some lower, some higher. Besides sulfites has been the unfortunate whipping boy for a lot of stuff it simply doesn't deserve.

Nope, I'd consider it anecdotal too. And think that either she likes the KJ so much that she associates good memories with it, or she usually consumes KJ with foods and thereby dilutes the alcohol more, or she consumes the KJ more with friends who don't consume as much volume, or something like that.

It's easy...very easy, in fact....to say you were out and had a "few glasses" of wine, without realizing you were sloshing it down pretty heavily....until the next day when you got that headache. And of course, since you only had a "few" glasses, it couldn't be overconsumption that was at fault. Must be the wine, eh?

The only way to figure this out, really, though, is to have the woman schedule a controlled test: drink the same number of glasses of KJ as some other wine, under precisely the same circumstances, and the see what the aftereffects area. Of course, they won't be precisely the same circumstances, but at least you're controlling as many variables as you can. Then you'd know whether it was the different wine, or the consumption pattern.

And I'm willing to bet it's not the wine. It's either how it's consumed, or how much is being consumed.

Actually, Carl, I think KJ has been stepping away from the style that made them famous in the first place. They've been moving away from the sweeties and into a drier style, and not incidentally using less other-than-chardonnay grapes in their blend.

I believe the doughty wine reporter Robin Garr did a piece along that line a year or so ago.

Actually, Carl, I think KJ has been stepping away from the style that made them famous in the first place. They've been moving away from the sweeties and into a drier style, and not incidentally using less other-than-chardonnay grapes in their blend.

I believe the doughty wine reporter Robin Garr did a piece along that line a year or so ago.

Actually, Carl, I think KJ has been stepping away from the style that made them famous in the first place. They've been moving away from the sweeties and into a drier style, and not incidentally using less other-than-chardonnay grapes in their blend.

I believe the doughty wine reporter Robin Garr did a piece along that line a year or so ago.

Thanks everyone. Hoke - I'm glad you mentioned sulfites, because that's the first thing my friend asked me about. I explained to him about sulfites in wine, which led me to finally getting to the nature of the problem. I printed out this thread for him (he thinks I used the word "works" rather loosely ) and he's going to take it home for his wife to read. I'll report back tomorrow.

Howie Hart wrote:Thanks everyone. Hoke - I'm glad you mentioned sulfites, because that's the first thing my friend asked me about. I explained to him about sulfites in wine, which led me to finally getting to the nature of the problem. I printed out this thread for him (he thinks I used the word "works" rather loosely ) and he's going to take it home for his wife to read. I'll report back tomorrow.

Howie,

The next time anyone talks to you about a sulfite headache, send him here:

Howie Hart wrote:Thanks everyone. Hoke - I'm glad you mentioned sulfites, because that's the first thing my friend asked me about. I explained to him about sulfites in wine, which led me to finally getting to the nature of the problem. I printed out this thread for him (he thinks I used the word "works" rather loosely ) and he's going to take it home for his wife to read. I'll report back tomorrow.

Howie,

The next time anyone talks to you about a sulfite headache, send him here:

Great site! Great! I do have a question, though---In several places in your discussion of the sulfite myth, you say "special interests" benefit from the sulfite warning on wine labels. Who are these special interests? I would think that once the warning was affixed, there were no more paydays for lawyers. So who gains from this?

Howie Hart wrote:Thanks everyone. Hoke - I'm glad you mentioned sulfites, because that's the first thing my friend asked me about. I explained to him about sulfites in wine, which led me to finally getting to the nature of the problem. I printed out this thread for him (he thinks I used the word "works" rather loosely ) and he's going to take it home for his wife to read. I'll report back tomorrow.

Howie,

The next time anyone talks to you about a sulfite headache, send him here:

Great site! Great! I do have a question, though---In several places in your discussion of the sulfite myth, you say "special interests" benefit from the sulfite warning on wine labels. Who are these special interests? I would think that once the warning was affixed, there were no more paydays for lawyers. So who gains from this?

For one, Dave, CSPI. They want to scare people away from wine and they will do anything possible to make that happen. So, they hope, a headache means people will blame the sulfites in wine and then maybe blame wine in general. It's that old story--all press, good or bad, is good press for your agenda. It's a concept that is followed everywhere, even by certain wine critics.

Here is some information from the abstract of a recent PhD dissertation in Spain that relates to your question, I think. Biogenic amines are produced in wine and can cause headaches. How you make the wine apparently can influence the level of these amines.

Here is the biogenic amine section of the article:

Biogenic amines

Another aspect related to the quality of wines that has sparked great interest over the past few years and that Ms Jiménez has studied for her research, is the presence of biogenic amines in this alcoholic drink. These nitrogenated compounds are mainly formed during the alcoholic and malolactic fermentations of the wine, their importance lying in the negative effects on human health that can arise with their ingestion. Consuming wine with high concentrations of these amines, principally histamine and tyramine, can cause headaches, allergic reactions, heart palpitations, high blood pressure, diarrhoeas, and so on.

Moreover, the presence of high concentrations of histamine in wines can give rise to export restrictions, as a number of countries are planning to place recommended limits on this histamine content in wines; in other countries, such as Switzerland, they have already imposed this limit. To this end, it is important to know the evolution of the biogenic amines during the cask maturing of the wine as their final concentration can determine its exportability.

In her PhD, Nerea Jiménez concluded that there exists a grand variety in the evolution of biogenic amines during the maturing process of the wine in the barrel. For example, histamine and tyramine, the most toxic, are formed at the beginning of the process and subsequently their concentration falls, possibly due to their degradation. Nevertheless, putrescine and cadaverine, both of which boost the toxic action of the former two amines, build up in the wine throughout the whole aging process.

These findings are important in that they warn the enologist not to drop their guard in the control of these post-malolactic fermentation compounds, especially if part of the wine production is to be exported.